#short space story

[mogirl09]

Space Nerd Ahoy!

This is how I imagine a perfect day in Space. I sit down in my captain’s seat and admire the intricately designed interior of the spaceship. Despite the limited space, everything is perfectly arranged for maximum efficiency. The walls and ceilings of the spaceship’s control room are lined with metal panels, and complex instruments, computers, switches, and add-ons protrude from different corners…

[digitalsymbiote]

Disconnect Syndrome

There’s a reason they put restrictions on how long a Pilot is supposed to be deployed out in the field. They say that being synced with a mech for long periods of time can have detrimental effects on a pilots psyche. Disconnect Syndrome is what they call it, because the symptoms don’t really start to hit until you disengage from your mech.

Sometimes emergencies happen though, and mechs are designed to be able to support their pilots long past the designated “Safe Deployment Time.” The cockpit is equipped with an array of stimulants, vitamins, and nutrient paste to help minimize the physical effects of long deployments. The onboard Integrated Mechanical Personality has largely free reign to administer these as needed to maintain its pilots well-being.

Which is why you’re still able to make it back to the hangar after roughly 36 hours, over four times longer than the established safe period. Your mech had kept you going, helped to keep the exhaustion at bay long enough for you to make your way back from behind enemy lines. You were starting to feel a bit sluggish, but you knew the worst effects of Disconnect Syndrome were yet to come.

An older man in a long white lab coat has joined the usual retinue of crew rushing into the hangar as your mech settles into its cradle. You feel the docking clamps wrap around your limbs, and you know that’s not a good sign. Your IMP whispers comfort into your brain-stem, assurances that things will be okay. It’s probably lying, it’s programmed to help keep your mental state stable, but the thought helps anyway.

There’s a hiss of air as the seal on your cockpit breaks and it decompresses. Suddenly you become aware of your flesh and meat body once again, and it hurts. Pain and exhaustion has settled into your mostly organic bones, and your organs are churning from the strain of the past 36 hours.

Then your interface cables start to disconnect, and it gets worse.

It feels like parts of your mind are being torn out of you. You feel the ghost touch of your IMP in your thoughts as the ports disconnect and you lose direct communication with it. The oxygen mask and nutrition tube pull themselves away from your face and you can’t help but let out a scream of agony. The separation has never felt this painful before, but then again, after 36 hours together, you and your IMP were more intertwined than you’ve ever been before.

Physical sensation finally starts to register again, and you realize tears are streaming down your face just as a technician jabs a needle into your neck.

Immediately your senses start to dull, the pain eases as your thoughts turn sluggish. You slump out of your pilots cradle into the arms the tech who dosed you. Just before your world goes black, you see the doctor standing over you, a grim look on his face.

--

When you wake up again, you immediately know something is wrong. You try to ping your external sensors, but you get no response. You then try to run a diagnostic, but that fails too. In a desperate, last-ditch effort, you try to force access to your external cameras and suddenly light floods your senses. Your instincts catch up first and you blink, trying to clear the pain of the lights, and that’s when you realize it’s not your external cameras that you’re seeing.

It takes a minute or two for your vision to adjust to the light, which feels too long, and when it finally does, the world doesn’t look quite right. You’ve only got access to such a limited spectrum. No infrared, no thermal. The presence of your IMP is notably absent, and your skin feels wrong. You try to sit up, and it’s a struggle to figure out the correct inputs to send to your muscles to get them to do what you want.

The harsh white light of the infirmary grates against your visual processors, you feel like you’re having to re-learn how to control this body. Your body. Technically, at least. Something doesn’t feel right about calling it that anymore. You felt more comfortable crawling back into the hangar after 36 hours deployed than you do now.

The pale skin of your body catches in your vision and you glance down at it. The body's limbs are thinner and more frail than usual, and its skin is paler. Consequences of being in the cockpit for so long, subsisting on nothing but nutrient paste. It’s a far cry from the solid metal plates of your mech, its powerful hydraulic joints, its mounted combat and communication systems.

There’s a button on the side of bed you’ve been deposited in. You think it’s red, but you’re not sure you’re processing color properly right now. You try to reach over and push it, and it takes you a moment to realize you were trying to do so with a limb you don’t currently have.

There are so many things about this body that are wrong. It’s not big enough, or strong enough, or heavy enough. You don’t have enough eyes, sensors, or processors. You have the wrong number of limbs, and they’re all the wrong size and shape.

And there is a distinct void in your mind where the presence of your IMP should be.

The door to your room opens suddenly, and you instinctively try to fire off chaff and take evasive maneuvers. None of that translates properly to your flesh and blood body though, and all that happens is you let out a dry croak from your parched throat.

The man who walks through the door is the same doctor who was present when you disengaged from your mech, and he wears the same grim look on his face as he looks you up and down. You think there’s pity in his gaze, but you can’t quite read him properly right now. The jumbled mess of your brain tells you what he’s going to say before he says it, anyway. The harshest symptoms of Disconnect Syndrome don’t hit until after the pilot has disengaged from their mech.

You’ve already heard the symptoms before, and they map perfectly onto what you’re experiencing. You never thought it would be this painful, or this… discomforting. Your mind reaches for the presence of your IMP, searching for comfort, but you are only reminded that the connection is no longer there.

The doctor gives you a rundown that he’s probably had to do dozens of times, and he tells you that you’ll be grounded for the foreseeable future. That hurts more than anything else. The knowledge that, after all this, you won’t be able to reconnect with your true body, your partner, your other half, for who knows how long.

By the time you realize you’re crying, the doctor is already gone. The longing in your chest and your mind has become unbearable, and through sheer force of will you’re able to push this unwieldy body out of bed. Walking feels wrong, but you’re able to get to your feet and make your way out of the room in an unfamiliar gait.

You have to get back to your partner, you have to make sure it’s okay.

You need to hear her voice in your head again, her reassurances.

The world isn’t right without her presence in your mind.

You stumble into the hangar almost on all fours. How you managed to make it without alerting any personnel feels like a miracle. At least until you catch the eye of a technician lounging in the corner. The look she gives you is full of sympathy, and she jerks her head in the direction of where your mech sits in its docking cradle.

She’s a majestic sight, even through your limited spectrum of vision. 20 meters tall, 6 massive limbs, and bristling with weapons and sensor arrays (all of which have been disarmed by this point).

She’s beautiful.

You clamber frantically up the chassis, easily finding handholds in a frame you know better than the back of your hand. You pull the manual release on the cockpit hatch and stumble into it in a tangle of organic limbs.

Shaking hands grasp the main interface cable from above the pilot’s chair, and you move to slot it into the port in the back of your head. You’ve never done this manually before, usually you’re locked into the chair and the system connects you automatically.

Something about doing it with your flesh and blood hands makes it feel so much more intimate.

The cable clicks into place and your eyes roll back in your head. Tears start to stream down your face as you feel the comforting presence of your IMP rush in and wrap itself around your mind. Your thoughts reach out and embrace it back, sobbing at the relief you feel from being whole once again. You realize you don’t ever want to feel the pain of disconnecting from her again.

There’s a reason they put restrictions on how long a Pilot is supposed to be deployed.

[lunaiz4-misc]

By the time the humans invented wireless Internet, the aliens had already been monitoring the RF bands on and in the vicinity of Earth for decades. Well, they didn't have decades - that was a human concept - but many full orbits of the little blue planet around its yellow star.

The packet encryption broke easily when subjected to advanced computing techniques, and soon they were able to pick up, decode, and even send information on the "world wide web." Wary of being detected, they were careful to limit their queries, but even a severely restricted ability to actually *ask questions* made the xenoscience division go starry-eyed.

Their excitement was short-lived, however, as the screen displayed a message that chilled them to their cores: "to continue, please prove you are a human."

[marlynnofmany]

It’s back!

If you missed it the first time around, the “human are weird” anthology is back for a second printing. (There’s even a new story included: “Black Box” by Dara Brophy.)

Here’s the blurb:

In science fiction, humans are usually boring compared to other races: small, weak, with no claws or tentacles, and no special abilities to speak of. But what if we were the impressive ones, the unsettling ones, the ones talked about by all the other aliens? What if we're weird?

If you’d like a collection of excellent stories about humans inspiring awe, fear, and utter confusion, it’s available everywhere books are sold!

[whereserpentswalk]

Every starship always has a few ice people on board. It's just standard safety protocol. The minimum number is three, one ice person for defense, one ice person for repairs, and one ice person for medical.

Ice people are people who are put into suspended animation for the duration of a trip, only to be taken out in emergencies. They're useful because a ship won't have to deal with another passenger just for something that won't useally happen. It also makes it so that the ice person is the least likely to be harmed in emergencies. They used to use robots for these sorts of things but now that the robots have unionized biological life is cheaper for that kind of labor.

It's a pretty nice job. Nine times out of ten it's falling asleep and waking up a few months later. Doing it once or twice can pay off your college debts pretty quickly. Compared to the other jobs you'll get with that kind of skillset it's a pretty good deal. Most medical students are encouraged to take it as their first job to pay off their student loans.

Of course, there is a weirdness to it, not existing for such a long time. Even a few months will make the way things change weird. You'll come back to your home planet and things will be diffrent. A freind will have gotten married. A child that you're used to being a baby will be a toddler. Someone will have moved away. It's not all bad, hype for movies or video games, arguments that need time to calm down, skipping out on a bad time in politics. But still, it always makes you a bit separate from everything else.

Of course, there is always the fear suspended animation won't work as intended, and your mind will be trapped dreaming, or worse, conscious, during the entire affair. Perhaps things will that lurk in hyperspace will begin to speak to you. Or worse you'll just be alone, with nothing but your thoughts, and no way to cry out.

But that's not the worst of it, at least not for most people. For most people it's the much more mundane reality of needing to be an ice person for more than just one or two trips. You'll fall asleep and wake up months later, ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred times. And you'll find yourself only seeing the world through snapshots, really only having your other ice people to relate to. You'll be from a diffrent time as everyone the same age as you. It's better pay then any alternative, but there is a greater cost. Soon enough you'll be walking through your homeworld and it'll be alien to you, decades in the future from what you were raised to be in, you'll be wearing a diffrent eras clothing, speaking in a dead dialect, like a ghost from the past.

There was a young engineer who recently returned from being an ice person. Poor thing, she was sent out on an ambassador ship to an alien system thinking it would be about six months, but it turned out she was gone for decades as a war between that ship's nation and the alien homeworld broke out. When she came back all three of her spouses had died of old age, and her son who was an infant when she left was older than her when she returned, and her grandchildren she had never met were her peers.

[technoarcanist]

WAR NEVER CHANGES. BUT,

WARFARE NEVER STOPS CHANGING

"I've seen countless reasons why most mech pilots don't make the cut, but one of the largest hurdles are the physical alterations. The implants and modifications done to the fleshware is so extreme that it's enough to push most would-be pilots away from day 1.

Back in the day, when mech tech was still in its wild west years, when the technology was still in its infancy, things were different. Levers, joysticks, switches, a chair, most of the first models were something between the cockpit of a construction vehicle and a fighter ship.

Pilots in those days still consisted largely of the usual suspects. Test pilots, army jocks, space force veterans looking for something new, the occasional crazy who lucked their way up the ranks. All you needed back then was to be fit enough to work complex machinery. 'Handler's wouldn't be a coined phrase for nearly a decade. I still remember being a kid and seeing repurposed older models in the mech fighting streams.

Everything changed with the Bidirectional Cerebellum Computer Interface. To say nothing of how it changed civilian life, it was a military marvel. The BiCCI saw the creation of Mechs as we understand them today. The first generation were just retrofits, older models with a pilot's chair, and even manual controls to use in an emergency, but even then we knew that was only temporary. Before long, sleek frames of sharp angles, railguns and plasma cannons were rolling off the factory floor.

Like many things, it began small, optimising first for cockpit space by removing the manual controls. Before long, my then-supervisors thought, "Why have this glass? Why not hook the pilot's eyesight right into the advanced multi-spectral camera system? Before long, cockpits were but soft harnesses made to house a living body, their very soul wired into the machinery. Obviously, for security reasons, I cannot tell you everything about how our latest cockpits work, but suffice to say we've been further blurring the line between pilot and frame ever since.

This drew a very different crowd. Out were the army jocks and powerlifters. The only ones who even dared to have the interface hardware installed into their brainstem and spinal cord were the dispossessed, the misanthropes, those who sought not to control their new body, but to be controlled by it. No AI can work a mech properly on its own, but our pilots are never really in full control either anymore. Those who do try to go against the symbiosis get a nosebleed at best, and vegetative seizures at worst.

And that was that. The only people left who pilots these things are those who had already been broken, those who sougt a permenant reprive from being anything resembling human. A lot of my department quit around this time. I've lost a few friends over it, I'm not shy to say. Did we knew we'd be bringing in the more vulnerable people? Of course we did. But, the wheels of progress must turn, as they say, and it wasn't like we were shy of volunteers.

In our latest models, we have refined an even more advanced frame. Again, security detail prevents me from divulging too much, but one breakthrough we've made is decreasing action latency by approximately 0.02s by amputating the limbs from our pilots and replacing them with neural interface pads.

Using the pads where the limbs once were, pilots are screwed directly into the cockpit, which itself can now be 30% smaller thanks to the saved space. And, of course, we provide basic humanoid cybernetics as part of their employment contract while they are with us. Not that most of them are ever voluntarily out of their cockpits long enough to make use of them. Even removing the tubes from their orifices for routine cleaning incurs a large level of resistence.

And, yes, some of them scream, some of them break, some become so catatonic that they might as well be a peripheral processor for their mech's AI. But not a single one, not even one pilot, in all the dolls i've ever trained, have ever accepted the holidays we offer, the retirement packages, the stipends.

As you say, there are those who like to call me a monster for my work. I can see why. After all, they don't see the way my pilots' crotches dribble when I tell them I'll be cutting away their limbs, or the little moans they try to hide when we first meet and I explain that they'd forever be on the same resource level as a machine hereafter.

Those who call me a monster don't realise that, even after going public with how we operate our pilots, even after ramping up mech frame production, we still have more than twice as many volunteers as frames.

Those who call me a monster cannot accept that my pilots are far happier as a piece of meat in a machine of death than as the shell of a human they once were.

Those who call me a monster never consider the world my pilots grew up in to make them suitable candidates in the first place."

-Dr Francine Heathwich EngD

Dept. Cybernetic Technologies @ Dynaframe Industries

[In response to human rights violations accusations levied by the Pilot Rehabilitation Foundation]

[injuries-in-dust]

Captain’s log, number 197.

Well, it finally happened. They warned me it would when I took humans aboard, but I didn’t believe them.

The humans have threatened mutiny over an object they have pack-bonded with.

A few cycles ago, one of the humans placed ... decorative items ... what are they called? “googling eyes?” upon one of the maintanence drones. While against procedure, this seemed to be amusing to the humans and I let them have this bit of enrichment to their environment.

Last cycle another human, or perhaps the same one, I haven’t been able to get a clear answer on who did it, decided to expand upon this decoration with the addition of black bonding tape, cut into shapes the humans find very amusing.

See attached picture for clarity:

In another cycle we will be docking at space-station 114-Hartnell for our annual maintanence and reguation-compliance inspection. I need not say how we must be reguation compliant in order to maintain our trade lisence with the alliance.

This would, of course, include that all maintanence drones are kept up to code. So I ordered the humans to remove the decorations.

... I ...

...I have no words ...

Their reaction.

They named him.

It! I meant to say, they named it.

They stated, and I quote, “You will not touch one hair of Robert Floor-Buffington the third, captain, or there’ll be a problem!” 

They’ve made up stories! Robert Floor-Buffington, he’s a humble, but hard working space bot, who just wants to do right for his a robot wife, and robot children!

It’s a maintanence drone! Identical to the hundred other maintanence drones we have on board.

But the humans they’re insane!

They just will not be moved on this issue.

... Maybe I can pursuade them to just ensure this Robert Floor-Buffington is kept out of the inspectors way. We have a hundred identical models, surely they won’t notice that one is missing?

***Log paused for incoming message***

Captains log addendum.

Perhaps the inspectors will not notice four maintanence drones are missing.

The humans have decided to decorate three other drones and have taken to referring to them as the “wife and two children of Robert-Floor Buffington the third.”

At this time, there is a heated debate occuring in storage bay three over what the names of this robot family will be.

...

...

...

Additional. I have over two-hundred days of shore-leave accrued. I think I’ll be making good use of that in the near future.

[fae-papercuts]

Originally inspired as a response to some posts by @banrionceallach and @marlynnofmany. Polished it up and decided it would make a good start to my lil story blog. Enjoy!

Not Our Usual Passengers

“What do you mean, there’s something wrong with the engines?” Captain El'ek'tak said incredulously. “You’re not an engineer, none of you humans are. You’re not even crew, you’re passengers! How dare you claim there’s something wrong with my vessel!?”

The outraged captain puffed up her air sacks, the feathery amphibian inflating as she stared down the trio of humans who had been travelling with them for the past week. They were not what she had come to expect when transporting humans, not one bit.

They were quiet, for a start. One of them didn’t even speak at all, just made an occasional tuneless humming sound when they were concentrating particularly hard on something. That was usually accompanied by a rocking back and forth that seemed remarkably similar to the Ke'tek autonomic stimulation ritual of focus.

Humans weren’t supposed to do that, were they?

The second of the human party cleared their throat softly - something they always did before speaking, which was quite a rare occurrence. The captain appreciated this, actually. So many humans she had transported interrupted her, or spoke over each other. The disrespect was really quite remarkable - but these humans waited patiently for others to finish, and this particular human’s throat-clearing was used similarly to the way El'ek'tak’s own species rustled their dorsal feathers to indicate their intent to communicate.

“Captain, apologies if we caused any offence,” at this the non-speaking human’s eyes widened in surprise, and they shook their head, clearly agreeing in a profoundly apologetic manner, without words. Their apologetic companion went on, “We can’t be certain there’s something wrong with the ship, we just thought you should know that it sounds wrong.”

The first human spoke again, nodding as they added to their companion’s statement.

“Yes, I am sorry, I didn’t mean to assert certainty when I should have stated a suspicion,” they gave a short smile, then their face quickly fell back into a neutral expression. The captain was a little taken aback by this, as that particular human seemed to very rarely express facially - quite the opposite to what she was used to with humans. It was a little disconcerting, but mostly because she had put a lot of effort into learning about human non-verbal communication.

She blinked, and stared at the three for a long moment. “It sounds wrong?” she repeated back, surprised. She had heard of some particularly sensitive species being able to diagnose certain engine issues from the vibrational frequencies, but usually this required extremely highly trained specialists.

The silent human nodded, and raised a handheld device, tapping something onto its screen for a few moments. The other two humans turned and waited patiently as their friend worked, and the Captain watched with a raised eyebrow (this wasn’t a natural Girurian expression. She had learnt it from her human studies, enjoyed how it felt, and how it could communicate so many things at once).

The human held up the device, and it emitted a gentle, slightly robotic tone, “Engine pitch changed one point five hours ago. Rising quarter octave every seven minutes. Hurt very bad fifty five minutes ago.”

Captain El'ek'tak stared for a moment at the human, her feathers rustling vaguely, as she tried to figure out a response. She looked between all three of them. “You can hear the engines, from your quarters half way across the ship?” she asked incredulously.

The most vocal of the humans spoke, while the throat-clearer nodded and the non-verbal one tapped on their device. “Oh yes,” they said, “we’re all sensitive to sensory input, at least for humans. Not a patch on Alirians sound sensitivity, or Hynoids electromagnetic spectral range, or the scent capabilities of the Teraxids - did you know they can smell a single smoke particulate in a standard atmospheric volume of 500 cubic metres?”

The human with the device gently put a hand on the speaker’s shoulder and smiled softly at their friend - who turned bright red and looked at the floor. “Sorry, xenobiological sensory discrepancies is my special interest right now,” they said, before taking a slight step back. It was at this point that the captain noticed that they were fiddling with a strange cube in their left hand, suddenly speeding up how they manipulated the piece of plastic, changing its configuration rapidly. It was a fascinating display of manual dexterity, and considered asking about it for a moment.

“Engine makes the whole ship vibrate. Can hear it any place,” spoke the little device, for it’s human, interrupting the captain's curiosity. The human’s head rose, making eye contact with El'ek'tak. The human’s gaze was intense - more so than even the other humans the captain had encountered. Eye contact was so rarely a positive thing, across a wide variety of species, but with humans she had met so far it had always been considered important. So the captain had learned to look them in the eyes. It had been a surprise when this group avoided it so much, rarely meeting her gaze for more than a split second. Early in the voyage, they had politely explained that all of them found it hard, and that they hoped she wouldn’t take offence. Frankly, El'ek'tak had been a little relieved, as all the eye contact with others of the odd little species had been quite exhausting.

But right now, the diminutive human who never spoke and could apparently tell when engines changed pitch, was looking into her eyes, and the Captain could practically feel this little traveller’s distress. It made her ankle feathers itch, and she was surprised to find herself understanding quite so much from just a look.

The captain nodded, and broke eye contact. The human looked down again, reverting back to their usual slightly-bowed stance.

“Let me check with engineering,” she said, and turned to the panel by her side, tapping a screen to raise the engine-room. Slipping comfortably into her own language, she greeted the pair of engineering crew on duty, and asked them about the state of the engines, particularly frequency or oscillation-related issues. She gave them the time to check on it, waiting silently, still as a statue, while the humans figeted, or rocked gently side to side. Their motion made her a little uncomfortable, but she had learnt that with these three, continuous movement wasn’t a sign of impatience, as it has been for many previous human passengers.

After a few minutes, the engineers returned to the screen, and exchanged a few explanatory sentences with the Captain, before tapping fingers to their foreheads respectfully. The Captain returned the gesture, and ended the call.

El'ek'tak turned back to the humans, to see that the non-verbal one was already tapping on their device. She couldn’t help but rustle her feathers, wanting to reassure the humans, but not wanting to interrupt this overt preparation for communication. The throat-clearing human raised a finger briefly, a clear request for a moment of time, and the Captain found herself surprised again at how wide a variety of perception these humans could contain within a single species.

“Pitch dropping rapidly. Expect normal range in four minutes. Thank you, captain,” said the device, as the human beamed a broad smile at her for just a brief moment.

El'ek'tak’s feathers rustled briskly, and then she replied. “Yes, that’s alright, thank you for bringing it to our attention,” she said, pausing to gather her wits. “The interphasic array had become slightly misaligned. It wouldn’t have been detected by our sensors for another hour, and then we would have had to pause the engines to manually readjust it. Catching it this early, we could simply vary the input parameters to re-compensate, and bring it back into synchronisation,” she explained, relaying the gratitude of her engineering crew.

The most vocal human flapped their hands back and forth vigorously, grinning with delight. “Oh, thank goodness, I’m so glad we could help, and that the engine noise will at least be consistent. We were worried it would be horrible for the whole trip, and we’d have to reconfigure our ear protection all the time! Genuinely helping out the engineers is so great!”

The captain’s eyes bulged with happiness, quite unable to resist the infectious joy of the gleeful human. “I am glad your trip will be more comfortable, and I will pass on how helpful you were to Central, once we reach our destination.”

The throat-clearing human, who had so consistently noticed the captain’s non-verbal communication, smiled too. They actually chuckled a little as they said, “More neurodiversity stuff to go in The Guide To Interstellar Travel With Humans,” seeming pleasantly amused.

El'ek'tak winced in embarrassment. She had already sent in three amendments to the guide regarding natural variations in human cognitive capabilities and behavioural norms since they had left Alpha Centauri, the two weeks of travel offering surprise after surprise from these passengers. But as far as she knew, the guide wasn’t acknowledged by humans - she didn’t even know the species was aware of the now rather sizeable volume of collected knowledge. It certainly wasn’t available in any human languages that she knew of - after all, what would be the point?

The human’s chuckle became gentler, and the other vocal one of the group raised a hand in an extremely close mimic of the Girurian comforting gesture - as close as could be with the wrong number of digits, anyway. The Captain couldn’t help but relax, the effort the human put into the gesture only adding to the positive impact. They flashed another brief smile as their companion explained, “Don’t worry captain. Most of us don’t bother with it, but I find it fascinating. It has been wonderful seeing the updates since our trip began. Please, the more human neurodivergency is documented, the easier space travel can be for people like us.”

There were a few more polite exchanges, during which the captain learned  that the strange device she had notice was an 'infinity cube,' which was apparently a kind of 'fidget toy.' Then the humans left her ready room; a quiet, somewhat surreal collection of beings who had rather put a lie to the notion that humans were uniformly capable of being brash and difficult to deal with.

But they certainly didn’t do anything to diminish the captain’s view of humanity as a species eternally full of surprises.

[welcometogrouchland]

I understand that literature nerd Jason Todd is kind of overblown in fanon compared to it's actual presence in canon (a few issues during his pre (and post?)crisis Robin tenure that highlight it) BUT consider that I think it's hilarious if the unhinged gun toting criminal has strong opinions on poetry

[frickityfrackityfuckingshit]

Listen I LOVE the humans are space orcs thing, but imagine.

Humans are space crabs.

Like sure, there’s some really different looking aliens out there, with different ways of communicating and reproducing and stuff. But like. Being a human is just generally a good way to become the intelligent species on a planet. There are just human-like things everywhere.

“Our ship has 3 humans and 5 kraleex” Hendt reminded the human, Jane.

“What? No the ship has 2 humans, 2 splaids, 3 kraleex, and a loktad.”

“Agh, you all seem to tell each other apart but you look the same to me.”

“Kristopher is literally ORANGE AND 7 FEET TALL.”

“You’re beige. And Lance is uhhh.” He paused as he rooted around for the human sweet in his head. “Caramel. That’s practically orange.”

“Seriously humanity had some fucked up shit going on, you’ll probably offend Kristopher if you call him a human to his face.”

“Didn’t you convergently evolve?”

Jane sighed.

“Yeah but like- humans are pretty naturally aggressive. Loktads are quite peaceful, that’s why they took so much less time than us to advance. He’ll see it as an insult.”

Handt shifted uncomfortably.

“Humans are very useful in difficult situations. Despite your size and lacking in physical strength many of you have great problem solving skills. Your roots are nothing to be ashamed of.”

“Yeah because compared to other pentadactyly we were very distrustful of our own species and formed smaller groups. We had to be stronger as individuals.” Jane was starting to get a bit frustrated about giving this history lesson. Handt should have been given a briefing on human-like species, but the Strokt were know for their ability to pick up on skills, not knowledge.

Thankfully, they nodded slowly.

“I will refrain from calling Kristopher a human. I can see how this may hurt him.”

Jane let out a breathe of relief when he retreated. She couldn’t even remember the original argument. But at least Handt would now be less likely to offend one of their crew mates.

[kintsug1kitsune]

the pilot and the doll

"They took my fucking body! My body--" The pilot broke down, choking out a sob.

The combat doll stared with its many glassy eyes, tilting its head and softly chittering. "Your mech."

"Yes! Yes, my-- my mech, my body..." They knocked back their whiskey as if it could save them. "They said I can't pilot anymore, and..."

"Do you miss it?" the doll chirped.

The former pilot hissed. "I was alive in it, it was me, it felt like I was finally me. Especially in battle--I was myself, I was free." They looked at the doll half-drunk and with hollow hunger.

It was a stare the doll could return. "The truth of metal. The hum and hiss of mechanics. The force of artillery fire, and the grace of a weapon."

They stared at it a bit, sideways. "...Yeah, that's it. You get it."

"Because this one is that," it replied. "It is that all the time. Without a mech."

"That... must be nice. To just be that, be... yourself. All the time." The whiskey glass, empty, was considered for a long moment.

The doll waited for a time. And then spoke. "You could be."

"Huh?" They were shocked for a second, looking up abruptly.

"You could be like this one."

Their shaking head; disbelief. "No, no, I couldn't. No witch would take me."

"You are like this one," it said, and gently went to rest its head on the ex-pilot's shoulder. "And its Master would take you."

They didn't budge it, but... relaxed, a bit. A tear in their eye. "For real...?"

"Come with this one," it said, looking them in the eye, all five of its focusing on their pair. "Become."

There was a long pause, and a shaky breath.

"Alright."

[maybeelse]

The surgeon is sprawled out on her living room couch when you arrive, flipping through screen after screen of beautiful people on her ancient phone. One of her housemates answered the door and let you inside, their too-perfect smile drying into a polished mask as they realized why you were there. The last words they said to you before they fled were a quiet "good luck."

She's really not much to look at. Chubby and long-limbed, with oily shoulder-length hair. You can see her split ends from the doorway; it's obvious that she's never bothered to put proper care into them. Her clothes show a similar lack of effort, just loose grey sweatpants and a tank-top that barely contains her breasts.

The only part of her that's really noticeable—the part that catches your eyes and makes you hesitate at the enormity of what's about to happen—is the smooth plastic casings covering the ends of segment of her limbs, and the strangely spiky balls connecting them. The hum as she stretches, the faint whir as her fingers swipe left on another profile, a faint frown dancing across her lips—it's almost too much. The house is so quiet.

She yawns and shifts, glances up; sees you watching her.

"Yeah? Who're you?"

"Oh! I'm sorry, I'm, uh, Alex? We talked online?"

"Oh yeah. Was wondering when you'd get here," she shifts from lounging to standing in a way that would dislocate half your limbs if you tried to mimic her, "if you'd wuss out."

"… does that happen a lot?"

"Eighty-twenty. Lots of people online talk big but can't back it up, y'know? Hah," there's something sharp and brittle in her laugh, "sometimes people try to back out when I've already got them on the table. Can't deal with the reality of it. Weak."

"I … I see."

"So. You ready, Alex," she scowls, "or are you just here to gawk at the freak?"

She punctuates the question by rotating one of her hands around, wrist grinding as it completes the full 360-degrees. You're staring, gawking, but you can't help it; it's not like your sleepy little town has many—any?—other augs. They cluster in the cities, in the old world's radioactive junkyards, in the places where baseline biology isn't enough. It was astonishing to find one so near, much less a trained surgeon—her lips are tilting into a frown. She must think you're just a fetishist, a chaser, unworthy—

"No!" you practically shout, "I mean, uh. I'm ready! I'm ready."

"Yeah? Fine. Keep up."

The house looked normal from the outside, just another of the mass-produced mid-western two-story single-family trash-piles with attached two-car garage and optional backyard deck that the Kessler Belt's half-mad corporate agents carpet-bombs across the plains at irregular intervals. A GMO-turf lawn midway through being colonized by herbicide-resistant native plants, sprinkled with the telltale signs of the southwestern swarm's outriders; gnawed leaves, bright-carapaced aphids, and piles of plump rock plants marking the exact point beyond which baseline humans could expect fucking around to lead to finding out.

In short: it was a house like any other.

The illusion fails as you follow the surgeon deeper into her home, beyond the living room's pastel-patterned walls and focus-tested furniture. The interior layout had already struck you as a bit odd—the walls weren't in quite the right places, there shouldn't have been a step three feet inside the front door—but perhaps that could be explained away. Minor variations are normal.

The thick bulkheads and stained metal walls are not minor variations. Nor is the cavernous staircase plunging down where the ground floor restroom should be. A grinding scream echoes up as she leads you past it into what could almost masquerade as a normal garage, if not for the thick plastic sheets draped along its shelves and shrouding its ceiling or the polished metal table standing proudly beneath the garage's single light.

You can't tell what color the stains on the concrete floor are. Could be dark oil, could be dried blood. It's hard to ignore them.

"Here we are. Up on the table, Alex."

"Uh. Aren't there restraints, or, uh. Something? This is a bit …"

"Nah. First thing I'm gonna do is stick an AP filter in your neck." She grabs your neck, twists it; you gasp. "C5-C6 gap, probably, doesn't look like you've got anything weird going on. You don't, do you?" A pointed question. You can't shift your head, can't look her in the eye.

"N-no! My parents wouldn't," she releases you, waits while you rub your neck, "they're hardcore naturalists. Like, most people are, here? But they're …"

"That so? And here you are," she says, a hint of hunger tinting her words, "asking me to ruin daddy's perfect little all-natural—"

"Y-yeah."

"And then, what, you're going to run away?"

"Yeah. I have bus tickets," you pat your pocket, checking that they're still there, safe in your wallet, "for tomorrow. I just. Don't want to arrive with nothing, you know?"

She laughs, abruptly, startling even herself. "Oh, they're just going to eat you up, you know that, Alex?"

"W-what do you—"

"Don't worry about it. Just get on the fucking table already. Oh yeah," she grins, "you should strip first. Don't feel like cutting the clothes off you."

She doesn't seem particularly interested in watching you strip, at least, just leans against the wall and flips through her phone. Doesn't look away, doesn't stare at you, just lets you get on with it. She's being professional, you suppose, and even if she's not kind it's still better than high school locker-rooms. Anything would be better than that.

You still blush.

You're not sure where to put your hands, when you're done. Part of you wants to try to cover yourself up, to hide yourself, to hunch down and keep her from seeing, but … well, she'll see soon enough.

The table is unpleasantly cold under your ass, and you let out an involuntary squeak at the sensation. No doctors-office padding here, no disposable paper covers, just hard, cold, metal. She glances up at the noise, finally taking an interest again.

"Ah? Oh, right …" Her eyes sweep over your body, and you ball your hands in your lap, trying to keep her from seeing. "Well. I've worked with worse."

"I-I'm sorry, I, uh …"

"Don't worry about it, yeah? S'just raw material, who gives a fuck. Anyway," her joints grind as she starts to move, making her steps unpleasantly jerky, "let's get started. Give me a second …"

You flinch away as she pulls your arms away from your crotch, not understanding, but she's strong enough that your resistance hardly matters. Your arms positioned, she wraps her own arms around you. It's a strangely tender motion, but perhaps that's just because it's been so long since someone last touched you; certainly there is nothing except impersonal focus on her face.

"There will be a slight pinch," she says, and then, with a noise like shears closing on meat and bone, a noise that is exactly what it sounds like, there is pain.

You can't feel your body.

You're lying on your back on what must be the same table you were on a moment ago, before you passed out, and you can't feel your body.

The light above is shining directly in your eyes, and your entire head is tingling, and there's still a horrible pain in the middle of your neck, and you can't feel anything below it. There's a sharp smell in the air, and the sound of dripping, and—that's piss. You pissed yourself. Good thing you're naked, huh?

Thinking about that doesn't help with the pain.

Somewhere in the room, outside the narrow scope of your vision, you hear the surgeon tapping on her phone. Dialing a number. Waiting while it rings …

"Hey, hoss. Yeah, just started. Wanted to check the order priorities before I—yeah, I'll send you a picture." The click of a camera's shutter, exactly the same as your own phone made, back when you still dared to use it. "Mhmm, yeah. They breed them strong out here. … yeah. Yeah. I'll see—", a burst of static as the call ends, "—well fuck me for wanting to say goodbye."

The surgeon's feet click against the ground. She leans into your vision, eyes bright and eager, head limned against the light. "Guess what, Alex? You're going to be an assault drone."

[notpostingjustperusing]

I think what attracts people to humans are space orcs stories is not the inherent idea that humans are evolutionarily aberrant in the universe. Rather, it is the solution to the existential crisis of what if we are not alone in the universe. If we are alone in the universe, we are unique and able to make our mark on the universe unhindered. 

But if we are not alone, if there are countless other species, each identically unique, what is there to set humanity apart? How do we make the universe remember us after we have gone extinct. If all species are exactly like us, have things that make them unique and memorable, each grew up on a deathworld, each views themselves as a space orc, each has attributes about them but are multifaceted species, what difference does the existence of humanity make on the universe? Earth having evolved life will matter for the surrounding star systems and any individuals that come in contact with earthlings, but in a million years, will anyone care? Will we make a mark upon the universe, do anything to make the cosmos take notice of us?

And so in a universe of space orcs, what is it that humanity can do to separate ourselves? Space orc is not a prophecy, it is a promise to the stars. The only fear we have is not that we are not alone, it is that we are not unique.

[lunaiz4-misc]

Baubles

"Human, what is the purpose of the head covering you are wearing?"

"This? It's a hat, it keeps my head warm."

"Yes, I understand that, but why does it have a ball of strings on the top?"

"Oh, that? It's called a bauble, or a pom-pom. They're mainly used for decoration, but I've heard they originated with sailors, who used them as a sort of sensory extension so they'd know when they were about to hit their heads."

"That is BRILLIANT. Can you show me how to make one?"

"You knit?"

"Sure! Loads of us do! Knitting is one of the most basic ways of turning fiber into cloth, most sapient species have something like it. Show me how to make this 'bauble.'"

*a few weeks later*

"Do you like it?"

"Um... yeah, it's great. You really like baubles, huh?"

"I love them. I posted a tutorial video online, it's well on its way to being the new fashion."

"That's... great bud. Good for you."

[veryripebanana]

It has been a few thousand years since the humans have joined the federation. We have already collected every possible information we can about them. From their excessive need for "thrill", a cure for "boredom", and even their very fast scientific advancements/evolution. Since the time they had joined the federation, they have not only achieved the theorized speed capacity in our universe that is 10¹⁴⁷x the speed of light, ahead 10³⁴ times from the Dos'hk's fastest spacecraft, but they also have the largest and most advanced data storage system that powers their "internet" across the whole universe and stores everything to keep record of everything they know and will know. The data storage is named "Data point", it occupies a whole galaxy due to the extremely large population of humans at this point, but not only that, they have claimed to have a back up galaxy sized storage system that THEY HID, it is surprising that noone can find a galaxy sized data storage but then again, humans.

There are plenty more that i can talk to you about the humans but then, it will never end.

All i can say is with everything that the humans are, they are the reason that the federation remade the sorting/ranking system in their files 300 years ago. Back then the humans already were the highest with level 20 deathworld origin, level 20 technological advancements, and more. But thenthe federation made a decision to put humans in the only class "unknown" in every recorded species in the federation.

End note, the universe at this point is still deemed as "infinite" even by humans. Maybe that's why they have hidden their back up data storage from everyone. But also, maybe somewhere out there, in the farthest point, possibly 10^1983^18890^1000 light years away there's a completely diffrent universal group from the federation, and maybe, they too have a species they rank "unknown", and just maybe, make the humans seem like mortals.

[whereserpentswalk]

Humans sometimes wonder what separates them from other races like elves and dwarves and orcs, like what makes them unique. Some people say humans are generalists, some people say we're the most adaptable. But actually there is something that stands out about us that all the other races find super weird. Humans are the only sentient creature to reproduce sexually like animals do, and because of that we're the only species with romantic or sexual attraction, and ideas like sex and gender.

Elves and dwarves create new members of their races slowly and methodically, like works of art. Harpies, angels, demons and dragons are all individually and personally created by their gods. Orcs and goblins are spawned from spawning pits on mass. Merfolk come close with how they lay and fertilize eggs, but even then any individual merfolk can both lay eggs and fertilize, and they don't meet when they do it. Vampires and other undead are spawned from other races. Fae just sort of show up.

So the idea of having sexes, and genders constructed around them, and sexual and romantic relationships is all incredibly weird for other races. Most humans don't notice it because they just naturally assign members of other races genders when they meet them.

Diffrent races have diffrent ideas around these constructs. But most of them find it some level of confusing. A lot of them just ignore it. But it's really disturbing for some, romantic relationships seem like weird bonds that can't be explained, like some sort of unexplainable and volatile connection. Sexual attraction seems like some dark animalistic instinct. Gender is incomprehensible, and also seems wrong and immoral to most races. And sex itself seem like the darkest of any reproductive ritual or magic. Because of all of this humans who don't experience some or any of these things often have an easier time connecting with other races.

This has also lead scholars to belive that humans are the only sentient race to evolve naturally. Something often thought impossible before studies on humans occurred.